Alumni

Applying Knowledge and Experience from
IATSS Forum & Paying Forward to Community

Participant's Voices

AK

  • Country : India
  • Forum : 61st batch(2019 Spring Forum)
Dear Colleagues, Warm Greetings from India. I am Alankar Kaushik and I belong to the North-eastern part of India, a region full of culture and diversity. I am a faculty at EFL University, Shillong Campus where I teach courses pertaining to Journalism and Mass Communication. And apart from my regular teaching assignment, I have been leading a project titled Children in Media Experiments (CHIME) for the department of Journalism and Mass Communication at my campus with the support from UNICEF Assam since 2012. With the support of our dedicated team, we have experimented with many aspects of Participatory Media and finally since 2015 have been training school going children from economically disadvantaged groups near our campus to get acquainted with the skills required for storytelling through the use of visual media. I offer my sincere gratitude for selecting me as one of the participants for the training programme. And I am highly delighted and I look forward to gain a proper understanding of transcultural communication by meeting people from different regions of the world. The group discussions will open new area of avenues for collaborative projects among various nations. I believe listening to the innovative ideas and experience will provide me a platform to raise my sense of leadership to another level. The field trips in Japan and training on communication skills by the renowned experts will boost my confidence to come back and initiate my dream of applying proper communication channels for social change. This international exposure and the initiation of the dialogues among fantastic people from various countries will definitely act as a catalyst for improving on my leadership traits and will provide enough openness and fresh perspective to the cause that I am envisioning – ‘encouraging various communities to amplify their unheard voices’.
Feeling of completeness: It is a feeling that goes beyond expression to be at IATSS Forum, Suzuka for a period of almost two months, and I am still trying to make myself understand that I am not there now. I am back. The days were immensely interesting, challenging, and every day during the session was a day of expectation of something new. It took me just few minutes to get connect to the wonderful people around in the group from the neighbouring Asian countries and it was great pleasure to avail the opportunity of working with friends from different background, culture and different orientations. My involvement in the programme shaped me to be a better decision maker now. I have found myself that I am being able to look at different perspectives before giving my commitment to any work and the training is helping me to choose the right way in any project that I am undertaking. After internalizing the training, I feel a sense of completeness and ecstasy. That ‘active listening’ is also a very important part of empathy and better form of communication with people of diverse culture is something that I shall carry and motivate my fellows to practice. I have successfully come out from my usual habit of assuming certain situation beforehand without listening to people thoroughly with the help of the intensive training during our stay. My return to the home country from Suzuka brought not only good memories but have motivated me to engage my young students in different activities of understanding each other and provide them with a dialogic pedagogy which I am sure shall impact young minds. For me, this leadership programme shall not only motivate and teach you to become future leaders but also train your mind and body to be a better human being who shall gain the capacity of understanding other living being with great sense of empathy, Looking forward for a better world to evolve in days to come where there shall be mutual trust – with love ‘AK’

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